Wee Ginger Dug: There is no fight in Jeremy Corbyn but the same can't be said for Scotland

‘THE real fight starts now,” Jeremy said, after capitulating to the hard Tory Brexit in return for a concession that boils down to having a choice between jumping off a cliff or being pushed off it. There are rabbits frozen in headlights which have more fight in them than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Some of those bunnies can be vicious and can give a nasty nip, which is a whole lot more than you can say for the Labour Party’s ability to wound the Tories.

The tragedy for the country is that Theresa May’s Government’s Brexit position is as solid and well-formed as a blancmange in a tumble drier, and yet still Labour can’t make an impression on it.

The only fight Labour has is the fight against gravity as Britain plunges on to the rocks of a hard Brexit. That’s a fight they’re going to lose. But hey, they can always change things as they hurtle towards their doom. The real fight starts as you flail your arms about wishing they were wings. The real fight starts when you wonder why you didn’t start it before you fell off the cliff. The real fight starts when you’re lying broken and bleeding on the rocks. It’s just that then you’re in a fight for your life and it’s a fight you can’t win because you have smashed your arms and legs and the NHS has been sold off to American corporations.

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We’re in a time of enormous uncertainty, but a couple of things are clear. It’s clear that the Tories have morphed into Ukip and are bent on taking the UK into the hardest possible Brexit in which Scotland, along with everyone else, will be subject to the sort of right-wing regime that Liam Fox, with his cold dead eyes and his compassion the size and shape of a dried-up prune, daydreams about when he’s cosying up to Adam Werritty.

We can deregulate the Labour market, whispers Liam. Which sounds very adult and grown up except that it’s code for slashing the minimum wage, abolishing statutory leave, and weakening trade unions even further. Liam’s dream is to see Britain turning into a Sports Direct warehouse.

We’re living in a country which has decided it’s not going to give shelter to child refugees from the countries we’ve bombed. We’re not going to give any reassurances to EU citizens who are living here, condemning them to a life of uncertainty as pawns in a Tory game. And it’s all to placate a right-wing press that was spouting fake news and alternative facts before the terms were invented.

Wikipedia, that byword for unreliability, has announced it’s no longer going to accept pieces in the Daily Mail as sources for its articles, because the newspaper is too unreliable. We’ve got an unreliable source that does care banning an unreliable source that doesn’t. Not even Russia Today or Fox News has been banned by Wikipedia. That puts the Brexit cheerleaders in the same category as the Chronicles of Narnia as a record of fact. But that’s fair enough, because Narnia is where the Brexiteers have been telling us we’re heading. Right into the dungeons of the Ice Queen’s palace where it’s winter every day.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Theresa May’s Government is making plans to fight against a second independence referendum. It’s likely to go along the lines of: Scotland, it’s true that we lied to you all the way through the independence campaign. We told you the only way you could ensure your continuing membership of the EU was by voting No. We told you Scotland was going to be an equal partner in this family of nations, and that you would always be listened to and would always have a voice.

“We promised you all sorts of things that were never delivered, but I’m sure we can agree that everything that has happened is the fault of the SNP. Because they’re bad. The stepson of the third cousin of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband’s sister’s ex-husband’s former neighbour once taunted a homeless man. What more proof do you need?

“Anyway, there’s the possibility we might be open to discussing the chance of having talks about ideas for what we could suggest that could be on the table in the future. We’re calling it devo-phantomax because it doesn’t really exist. So ... can I put you down for a No vote?

Or you can decide that the real fight for Scotland starts now.

We can take the moral high ground, although to be fair when we look down into the selfish sink where British policy makers are taking us that’s not very difficult. Life in Brexit Britain is like living in the BBC Question Time audience, jeering at migrants, the poor, and Scots, with a grinning Ukipper at the top table.

The real fight is between a Scotland that makes its own decisions, a Scotland that’s open to the world and which knows the difference between morality and a headline in a right-wing tabloid, or a Scotland that meekly does what it’s told while its people are impoverished, its resources drained off, and its wealth squandered on the bonfire of British nationalist vanity while we turn our backs on the homeless in our streets and starving children in countries that our armed forces have helped destroy. The real fight is a fight between humiliation or dignity. Let’s choose the dignity of making our own decisions.

Ipsoregulated

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